My love of flowers started when I was young. It remained a hobby during my 35-year career as a registered nurse. Throughout that time, I continued to enjoy growing and arranging flowers for family and friends.

Whilst working, I attended many evening floristry courses and achieved my Diploma in Floristry, Level 2. I finally left my Nursing career in 2016 to begin working for myself. Shortly after, I started to do gardening work for Field Gate Flowers. Roz soon asked me to help with their floristry, too. I have since left the gardening/growing side of things and now concentrate solely on the floristry side of the business.

As a florist, I’m continually learning & growing. Trainings include:

•  Jay Archer Floral Design Flower School on Bridal Floristry
• ‘A Wedding Retreat’ with Tallulah Rose Flower School
• ‘Wedding and Event Floristry’ using sustainable floristry methods

When I’m not doing my own florals, I’m very busy working with Roz and the team at Field Gate Flowers. I love to use my skills in creating and designing with their own beautifully home-grown flowers.

Emma Thomas believes that she has the best job in the world ~helping people to fall in love with, develop, and get the best from their gardens (whilst wading in ponds and climbing trees)! Emma trained for her RHS diploma at Shuttleworth College and hopes to undertake the RHS Mhort, when her small children are a bit less needy.

Emma has a passion for wildlife and natural planting. She loves plants so much that she’s vegan (eat, grow, and dream about plants, it’s an obsession)! Her style is Piet Oudolf meets Dave Goulson with a bit of old English cottage garden thrown in. Emma is constantly on courses and working towards further diplomas to expand her knowledge.

She also has a bit of a thing for gardening books!

Emma's favourite podcasts

Roz Chandler together with her team in Lathbury, Milton Keynes (the home of roundabouts and concrete cows) is passionate about growing, harvesting, and arranging seasonally grown British blooms. Field Gate Flowers established for nearly ten years is a thriving flower farm.

As a child Roz loved nothing more than messing around outdoors. Her favourite memories were on a school French exchange on a farm in France This was a long way from the New Town of Hemel Hempstead that Roz grew up in.

The outdoors featured highly in Roz’s early years, and then she went to Plymouth Polytechnic (those A levels were never going to get her into medical school) to study Environmental Science. Her thesis was on the carcinogenic effects of nitrates from fertilisers in water. A lot of dark winters evening were spent collecting samples in the River Lea. (felt very radical back then).

Nearly 10 years ago Roz purchased a rather sad looking barn with five acres of land and so the dream begun. Roz was a novice and certainly had not come from a background of horticulture.

Roz is passionate about reducing the number of imported flowers coming into the UK. The Dutch government heavily invested in the 1970s and Holland became the hub of European flowers – flowers coming in from Africa and further afield to adorn our supermarket shelves.

When not in the fields, Roz loves having adventures. A keen cyclist she always takes on at least one charity ride a year in far flung places, the most recent have been India, Madagascar, Morocco (those Atlas Mountains) and Vietnam.

On her bucket list is the dream to cycle all the Greek islands over 6 months with just a bike and a friend for charity. What could possibly go wrong?

Roz has two daughters, a husband, 7 pigs, two goats, 5 chickens, a dog and a recently added kitten. What next?

Roz’s dream is to encourage more people to grow, harvest and arrange seasonal flowers.

She truly hopes you will join her on this journey.